Izzy

Thursday, April 21, 2016
Magic Island

Meet Izzy...she's my boss' daughter and she's graduating from Sacred Hearts in a few months...

Hakone

It was a loooong day...we woke up at 5 to make sure we made the 7:30 train to Hakone.  If you plan on going, hop on the subway to Shinjuku station and head over to the west exit.  Look for the Odakyu lines and head over to the ticket machines.  It will be labeled "Romance Car."  If you plan on doing a one - three day trip you're better off purchasing the Hakone free pass.  I think it was about ¥5500.  This includes tickets to to all the cable cars and trains while in Hakone.  It also pays for you initial train ride to Hakone (sort of).  You also need to purchase a ticket on the Limited Express for ¥800.  Weird.  None of the websites we saw told us this.  You also need to know what station you will be getting off at.  We went to Hakone-Yamato.  Grab one of the pamphlets at the station also.  It's very helpful.  It has a big map and all of the scenic points you will be stopping at

It took about 45 minutes to get to Hakone and we needed to transfer to a bus (station 2) so we can hop on a pirate ship to Hakone Michiko.  Don't worry about getting lost, just follow the crowd.  Note:  THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!  If you get on the bus and you notice that there are no seats left, then turn around!!  Get off that bus and wait for the next one.  We made the mistake of staying on and I had to stand for about 40 minutes on a windy and bumpy road.  Good thing I was by a step in the bus because by half way I had to sit down.  I thought I was gonna hurl.  The bus kept stopping to pick up more and more passengers.  I wanted to get off but we were in the middle of the bus and it woulda been a bitch getting off.  I wanted to kiss the ground when we finally reached our destination.  

Since I was feeling like crap we decided not to hop on the first boat and just walk around the town for a little bit till I felt better.  Good thing it was a cold morning cause I was sweating!!

We hopped on this ship for about 20 minutes to Obako, where we jumped on a cable car.  Unfortunately there was volcanic activity going on so our cable car ride was cut short and we had to jump on a bus instead.  This time I got to sit down :)

There wasn't much to see from the boat so I didn't take any pictures...these are from the cable car

When we got off there was a lookout point where we could see Mt. Fuji...

couldn't help it.  I'm a sucker for these things

Waiting for the bus...

You could see the sulfur coming out from the mountains...

When we got to Sounzan we jumped on one last cable car to Gora

From there you could either take the train back to Hakone-Yamoto to head back to Shibuya but Randy and I went to the Open Air Museum instead.  It was a quick 10 minute walk from the station.  Normally it's ¥1600 to get in but if you have the Hakone free pass then it was ¥1400

This place was pretty neat

I was waiting for these kids to move out of the way so Randy could sit down but they wouldn't go away!! >:( hahaha!

The Picasso museum was really cool but I wasn't able to take pictures inside...

This was me by the end of the day...

I totally passed out on the train coming home.  We were too lazy to go out to eat so we went to the department store at Shinjuku station and picked up some food to bring back to the hotel

This tofu was AMAZING.  Very pricey, I just had to see if it was worth the price.  It was.  Totally.

Yawn!  Only a few days left here, not sure what's in store next...

Wandering around Tokyo...

Ginza
Sunshine City
Back to Ginza

Once again we didn't have anything planned because we thought it was gonna rain today.  It ended up being a dry and wonderfully chilly day.  Go figure.  So what do we do?  Eat of course!  Sheesh.  I really really really gotta go on a diet when I get home...

A couple of friends of mine recommended a cheap sushi joint called Midori Sushi Ginza.  They warned me that there might be a line but it does move pretty fast.  They open at 11, and this was the line at 10:55...I don't know if you could tell but this is where we're standing and it loops around comes back to the entrance

This is what the signage looks like...don't ask me for directions, we just got directions from yelp and they took us in some round about way.  It shoulda been really easy but I don't know why it took us the way it did.

Not too shabby for all this sushi, 2 beers, a sake and two bowls of soup...the fish was really good

Hahahahahahaa!!

We were so full after lunch we took the subway to Ikebukuro and walked around the Sunshine City area.  I had to look for some Hello Kitty tsum tsum's for my friend Kathy...success!  So cute yah!

Later on at night it was time for dinner and Kathy had told me about a new complex that opened up at Ginza station, so we went to check it out.

It was pretty upscale but very nice.  I was starving and we were craving something other than Japanese food (WHAAAA???).  We saw a picture of Bearburger on the wall and it was a no brainer!  It was really good but kinda pricey for burgers. The bill came out to ¥5100 for two burgers, fries and a beer

Up on the 11th floor you could go up to Kiriko Terrace.  It was really beautiful up there, it was open aired so it was a bit chilly, but you had wonderful views of the city.  Of course I didn't have my camera, I barely used it all day and now that I needed it, it was back at the hotel.  Iphone had to do...

The terrace is split into two different rooms, green and water.  If I remember I want to come back during the day to get some better pics

On the 6th floor there's Kiriko Lounge, it's also very nice but it was hot after coming down from up top

We're heading to Hakone early tomorrow morning so I gotta get to bed.  See you tomorrow!